Persian Poetry, Painting and Patronage: Illustrations in a Sixteenth-century Masterpiece

by Marianna Shreve Simpson

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Book cover for Persian Poetry, Painting and Patronage

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Commissioned by Prince Sultan Ibrahim Mirza in 1556, five Iranian court calligraphers devoted nine years to transcribing the poetic text of the great Persian classic, the Haft awrang (Seven thrones), by the mystical poet Abdul-Rahman Jami. Then a team of gifted artists undertook the illumination and illustration of the manuscript. The masterpiece they created - housed today in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and known as the Freer Jami - is a sumptuous volume of some three hundred folios of elegant cursive script with richly decorated margins, thousands of multicolored section dividers, nine illuminated headings and nine colophons that begin and end the main divisions of the text, and twenty-eight narrative paintings. This book reproduces to scale the Freer Jami paintings, discusses each in detail, and introduces the manuscript's patron and artists, painting style and meaning.
  • ISBN10 0300074832
  • ISBN13 9780300074833
  • Publish Date 20 April 1998
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 22 September 2006
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Yale University Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 79
  • Language English